Measurement of Market Concentration Faced by Labor Pools: Theory and Evidence From Fast Food Chains in Rhode Island With No-Poaching Clauses

No-poaching clauses in franchise agreements recently have attracted widespread attention from the press, state Attorneys General, private litigations, and Congress. The concern is that franchise no-poaching clauses may increase monopsony power by increasing the share of jobs that individual employers control. Fundamental empirical support for these investigations and legal claims is based on important assumptions and limited empirical research. This paper challenges fundamental assumptions in pr